Page 68 of The Vacancy In Room 10

Cass just stays sitting at the table, waiting for me to calm down, knowing I can’t—that the loss is too heavy, and I can’t have him back to forgive him for not being there that day or not answering the phone at the right time. I’m so goddamn sorry for everything that I can’t breathe.

Cass finally comes over because I don’t stop wailing. She puts her arms around me, and even though I hate her for keeping this from me, I fall into her, and she lets me sob on her chest until there is no more left. She strokes my hair, and after an eternity, we are both quiet and still.

“Send this to me,” I say, and she looks taken aback. She hesitates, but she taps at her phone and sends me a copy of the video.

“It’s mine. It was for me,” I say quietly, trying not to cry again. “Why do you have this? How the fuck do you even have this?” I say, and she moves away from me. My crying, and her comfort, over. Now the anger starts to surface.

“Can I mix us a drink?” she says, rifling through my cupboards and pulling out a bottle of Henry’s vodka.

I don’t answer. I just continue to let my thoughts chase each other until my head is spinning, trying to understand, more than any of it, who the fuck Callum really is. It was him. He’s the reason Henry is gone, and just when I think I’ll explode into full-blown rage, Cass hands me a vodka tonic and sits next to me and starts to explain.

26

CASS

I don’t know if I can tell her everything. Will she betray my trust? I owe her most of it, but right now, even though Eddie is going to be our ticket to freedom, I won’t bring him into it just yet. All she cares about is answers and justice, and that I can give her without implicating myself just yet.

I take a couple of gulps of the cold vodka tonic, and then I stand because I don’t even know if I can look at her when I talk about her husband. The shame is too heavy. But I begin anyway, staring out the front window, looking down at the pool where Rosa and the girls sit. I notice Rosa glance up this way once or twice, probably wondering if I’ve told her yet.

“I used to do this thing where I’d sort of blackmail guys for money,” I say. “Just the terrible, married ones who were out cheating—I’d get a few hundred bucks off them,” I say. “I pissed off a lot of people, but I survived that way for a while. And I’m not proud of it, okay, but one day Henry came to the apartments late—he was usually only around during the day. But for some reason that night he was super drunk and sat on the bench in front of the office. I was chatting with him about nothing—a lightning bug flying around or something else meaningless, and then he passed out midsentence. I liked Henry, I didn’t plan on blackmailing him, okay, but it was an opportunity that fell in my lap. Literally. So I took a twenty out of his pocket. Again, not proud. I know it was shitty, and I took his phone from his hand. It was unlocked, and he was watching a stupid video, and his phone was just hanging from his hand, so I scrolled through it just to see if I could get any dirt. I didn’t want to use it on him of all people, but I kind of collected dirt on people for a rainy day, just in case,” I say. “I was feeling pretty desperate back then.” And I feel like a hypocrite somehow, saying the words back then since it was not that long ago at all.

“And you found the video,” she says. “And you didn’t call the police? Like right away?”

Now I’m pacing, keeping my distance because she has every right to start belting on me. I can’t say that I would show the same restraint if I were her. “I mean, I was going to,” I say. “I was shocked and... God, beside myself. I confronted Callum with it, of course. I showed him the copy I sent myself and said what the fuck, Callum? Of course, but damn it, I mean. It sounded crazy, what Henry was saying. It did sound like a drunk rant from an angry person. Lily was sick, nobody killed her—I mean that’s what made the most sense—that a dying woman died, and he was depressed and distraught...and drunk. I didn’t want to think this was all of a sudden a fucking 20/20 episode. Occam’s razor and all...”

“What?” she says, shaking her head.

“Occam’s razor,” I repeat. “You know, the theory that says the simplest explanation is usually the right one...”

“I know what it means,” she says. “But you said he’s on some drunk rant. He doesn’t seem confused or crazy, though. He seems...anguished, scared maybe...”

“Okay,” I say. “But at the time I took this off him, he was passed out drunk, so I guess I just bought that it was a drunk rant. Callum convinced me it was crazy—he said it was the ramblings of a drunk and very depressed man, and that it was the most far-fetched thing anyone could say. That he had these feelings for Lily, and her death put him over the edge. You have to admit that sounds reasonable. I mean, shit, understand; Callum doesn’t come off like a total nut job, we were almost friends. Lily was dying, Henry was... He said himself he was depressed and on meds for it. And Lily was very sick for a long time. I decided I would give him the benefit of the doubt. A video isn’t proof by itself. I didn’t ask Henry about it, but I did keep the video. I mean, I wanted to believe Callum, but part of me doubted it, I think. I don’t know. I actually tried to put it out of my mind after Henry died because his suicide proved to me, I guess, that what Callum said was true. That he was in a really bad way, and if he was that depressed, he might say a lot of things. I tried to move forward. I had a lot of my own shit going on anyway. That’s why I didn’t tell you. Suicide, case closed. That was it.”

I take another gulp of my drink and stare at the ceiling. It sounds pathetic when I say it all out loud.

“You had this this whole time,” Anna says, “and you didn’t put together that he might have hurt Henry if what he said in that video was true?”

“No! Why would I? You only told me yesterday that it wasn’t suicide! Nobody knows that. Everyone here still thinks it was suicide. When you said foul play, that’s when everything changed—that’s when I knew I’d fucked up by not bringing this to the police,” I say.

“But you still didn’t!” Anna says, now pacing the floor herself, looking like she could start punching shit or sweeping all the contents off the coffee table before flipping it over. I can’t blame her. She looks at me, then... “What are you waiting for? I’ll go, then. There’s a psychopath on the loose just living his life, getting away with it!” She raises her voice and moves like she’s about to bolt out of the apartment and bring it to the police this very second, and that can’t happen. She’s muttering, “I knew I should have told them about the affair, about everything. I’m an idiot.”

“Anna. Wait! Okay...you have to understand, I couldn’t go to the cops. Even if I suspected Callum this whole time, which sometimes I did, my hands were tied.”

“Why? Tell me how the fuck this could all happen—why nobody did anything?” she says, running her hands through her hair and pacing but not actually leaving.

“Shortly after I confronted Callum, I did a very bad thing. It was an accident! I can’t get into it, but he knows about it, and if I outed him and this video... My life would be over. You have to understand, it was actually life and death for me, so I was silenced. Maybe that’s why I kept convincing myself he was telling the truth when I had doubts, because he had a very big secret of mine, and we were...sort of...I don’t know. Slaves to each other’s secrets.”

“What did you do? Is everyone here a goddamn criminal?”

“Listen, I didn’t think the video was enough to prove Callum did it. I mean, you tell me then... With no toxicology report on Lily and a cremated body, would you have risked your life to point the finger at him?”

“I don’t know, because I don’t know what kind of trouble you got yourself into! But if you were trying to blackmail the nicest guy in the world, I can only imagine.”

“Really? He was having an affair on you! Fine, he was a fucking saint, and he had his reasons, and everything he said... Fine. But give me a break. Carrying on a months-long affair would make anyone question him—self-admitted suicidal tendencies and meds would make me at least maybe believe Callum when he explained it,” I say, enraged at being the punching bag over and over again with everything. With Reid and Eddie and Callum and now her. I’m just so fucking done and ready for it to be over.

“Fine. You’re right,” she says quietly.

“I’m on your side, believe it or not, and if you can give me a couple of hours, I have a plan to nail Callum to the fucking wall.”

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